Archive for June 2012

“How can anyone trust me? I say I’m a healer, but look at me! I’m sick again! I’m tired, I have a cold, and my leg hurts. If people really saw what my life is like, they would never trust me to help them. I mean, who do I think I am to help others when I keep having so many troubles myself? I mean, I’m not very believable, am I, when I can’t even heal myself?”

“If you really knew me, you wouldn’t trust me. I mean take a look at me. Here I am again, needing to make money again this month. I managed to pull it out last month. And sure, I paid all my bills, and I even hired that new assistant I know I needed. But here I am again back at nearly zero at the beginning of the month. It’s just a few days away, and I can see it coming. How can anyone trust me to help them with their money, when I keep being in this position myself? I say I’m a money coach, but what a crock that is!”

“Yeah, right. So I say I’m all about women’s empowerment, right? And I can’t even speak up clearly about what I want in my relationship! I did it again. I let myself do what he wants instead of saying what I want. It’s such a frigging habit, I can’t stand it! Sure, I enjoyed myself. It’s not like I don’t like those people or want to spend time with his friends. It’s just that I also want to do other things that are more what I enjoy. I can’t believe it. If people were to see how I don’t stand up for myself, they would never want to work with me. I mean, I wouldn’t work with me—I am so lame sometimes!”

Ouch. Double, triple ouch. Unfortunately thoughts like these are all too common. They can eat away at you, carving out your confidence from the inside. They can lead you to want to take more courses, get more certifications, and withdraw from doing the outreach and invitations you need to make to make your business a success.

Do you ever feel like a fraud, like if people REALLY knew, they wouldn’t trust you or hire you?

Okay, B R E A T H E.

The good news is that you are not alone.

So many people have these thoughts! The most amazing people I know have these thoughts—and that includes you. Curious, huh?

Get this—feeling like a fraud is a pattern of thought—a common belief system—that is not true in any real sense. Even more, it’s probably not even yours! This is an archetypal attitude—let’s call her Felicia, the Fraud. No matter how well things are actually going, no matter how many people she has actually served to lead better lives, no matter how far she’s actually come in her own development, this nagging habit of thought casts aside all of that.

Yes, of course, it’s that “not good enough” or “not enough” script.

But what I want to point out today, is that this takes a particular form for people in the healing arts and transformational fields. Because historically those with intuition, those connected with herbal remedies and earth spirits, those women who knew in their bones how to guide a birth—and that’s most of us—we were systematically persecuted, discredited, outcast or killed at different points in time, in locations across Europe and the Americas. Yes, there was a time when it was dangerous to be us.

And we carrythe memory of that in the cells of our bodies—and the frequency of our energy fields.

Another piece of good news.

All of that is changing now. Faster and more powerfully than ever.

Because in this year of potent change, now more than ever, you can release all the wounds and patterns of those earlier times. You can let it go. That’s why so much is coming to the surface now, and you may be experiencing fear, or stress, or thoughts of being a fraud or not good enough so strongly. Because it’s time to let it all go.

Whether you are paying attention to the astrology and the conversation around 2012 or not—you KNOW that something BIG is up. You can feel it in your bones.

The call for freedom is stronger than ever. The push to heal and grow is stronger than ever. The support for evolution is stronger than ever. So use it. Use it.

Take a few moments and go inside. Notice what thoughts have been running around inside your mind about your abilities, your worthiness, your ideas of perfection and how you may not be meeting them. Aim to notice without either believing them, or judging them. Just notice.

Breathe deep. Breathe in your own soul essence, breathe out the self-judgment.

Now say this to yourself and see what pops out: “And the truth is . . .”

When you get the rest of the sentence, go ahead and write it here in the comment box below. I want to hear the truth! And you will move forward into your freedom one giant step by sharing it. Do it now!

I’m gone at Dance Camp this week. So I am sending you blessings for your summer vacation, whether that is a trip away from home, more time in your garden, playing with your children, or finally doing something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time!

This is such an incredibly expansive time of year, and today is the Summer Solstice. The potency of a very potent year is reaching a peak. I hope you are paying attention, waking up at another level, burning off all the layers of what no longer serves you, and embracing your true brilliance within.

I love going to Dance Camp because I remember places in myself when I move a lot day after day that I forget at other times. I dive into my moving meditation, eyes wide open, all senses alert, mind quiet because frankly it cannot keep up with what is happening. I let go, burn through, open up, allow, receive, give, connect. And it’s really great when someone else is doing the cooking and cleaning all week long. ;D

You’ve probably heard that a million times. And yet have you allowed the reality of that statement to sink in? Because when you really breathe and open to the truth of your own uniqueness, you allow in the awareness of your own specialness

From a spiritual point of view, this is a paradox. You are unique. I am unique. And yet we are all one, too. “There is just one, big BEING breathing here,” I would often say when I was facilitating a Clarity Breathwork® circle. And it’s true, we are made of one energy, one life-force, one consciousness.

Yet you, and I, and each of us, is an individual expression of divine source energy. Each is unique, never to be repeated again, ever, anywhere. Amazing when you really take that in. Radical diversity.

Your Soul Signature provides you with a map to understand the uniqueness that is you. To discover it, you need to identify, accept, embrace and embody your gifts, talents, skills and experience from this life and from your Soul’s Journey.

In this article let me dive into one aspect of this so that you can get a sense of the potency and significance–to you and to your business–of embracing your Soul Signature.

You brought into this life with you a whole range of gifts and talents. Some of them may have been recognized, welcomed and appreciated by your family, schools, and community while you were growing up. If you were good at math, like I was, or science, or even reading and writing, you probably were acknowledged and rewarded for those gifts and talents.

Many of your gifts and talents probably were not appreciated. This is particularly true if you are strong in areas such as intuition, relationships, emotions, and creativity. These areas are not generally seen as valuable by our left-brain, logically-oriented society that values analysis, data, and the physical world. I know I didn’t have a class in any of these areas when I was in school, did you?

For me, my culture reflected back a deep appreciation for my math ability–and was either not acknowledgingor downright suspicious about my considerable intuitive abilities.

Many of my clients and students are also highly intuitive, creative, and right-brained, and they, like me, are in the process of coming to more deeply accept, appreciate and embody those gifts–despite any wounding they received early on regarding them.

Is this true for you?

This is just so important because here at the turning of the New World Age, you and all of your gifts and talents are needed. It’s time to rebalance our world by bringing in intuition, creativity, emotions, and relationships in ways that create greater awareness of what is really going on, more personal freedom, and more responsibility to the health and well-being of the whole of life.

For too long massive resources–not just financial, but also our beliefs and life-force energy–have gone into anti-life industries. In order for us to make it going forward as a species–and as guardians of this beautiful planet, it’s time for that to change.

And you and your business are an important part of that. A critical part in fact. Because you as the founder of soul-inspired business, based on your uniqueness, are a leader in creating the new world you and we want to live in. When you resource from the deepest, truest place inside yourself, you are wisely guided.

The step presented here for you is to identify, accept, embrace and embody your gifts and talents. Especially the ones that haven’t been more widely recognized, and yet are key features of what make you, you. Your Soul Signature also includes your skills and your life experience, as well as your gifts and talents. This is rich and deep work. And the foundation of a truly meaningful life and a profitable, impactful business.

As you do this work, you will come to know your True Value. And your True Value, as a service provider, is the very basis of your business. It’s the basis of your offerings, your pricing, the results you provide. Because when you get your True Value–based not on something external, but from the inside–you have confidence, credibility, and magnetism like never before.

Phew! We have been having a tremendous heat wave here in Sebastopol this week!

We are not used to temperatures in the 90s. The best part is that it makes for perfect beach weather. We live just 8 miles from the ocean, and truth be told, it is often so windy and cold at the beach that it’s not appealing to hang out there. But this weekend it was hot, with no wind, and that made for a perfect day at the beach!

Our favorite is where Salmon Creek runs into the ocean, and there’s a great calm area where the kids swim all day long. This day it was packed, but still really open and enjoyable.

I’m looking forward to leaving tomorrow for our annual trip to the foothills of the Sierras for the Northern California Dance Collective’s Summer Dance Camp.

We’ll spend a week dancing, playing, swimming in the lake, connecting with friends, meeting new friends, and enjoying time away from the computer! I’ve been since 1998, when I first met my husband, Geej. I’ve seen children born and growing, marriages made and broken, old jobs left behind and new business and endeavors emerge in the lives of my friends over the years.

So much happens when you’ve known people for a long time, and this is particularly precious to me since I have moved a lot in my life. I’ll send you some pictures from the dance floor . . .

Something like 98% of us grew up with money issues, because that’s how many of us didn’t get an education about how to really make money, how to manage it, and how to use it to create the lives we really want. And when the economy changes, as it has the last few years, those issues come right up. What you once relied on isn’t there anymore, not like it used to be anyway.

Big changes are afoot, certainly. I know many of you have been experiencing changes in your work and business lives. Jobs ending. Businesses struggling. Ways of doing things that once worked no longer getting the results that they once did. Knowing inside that you want so much to contribute, express yourself, make a difference and live in a better world–and seemingly running into walls, or at the edge of the cliff, pushed to your maximum.

I know exactly what this feels like because I have been through this, too. I was completely lost about how to get my first job, and I’ve had to learn everything I know about business outside of–and counter to–the culture of my family and first communities. And as a Soul Healer and Awakening Your Light Body Teacher, I’ve really been on the edge, to say this least. It hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been steady, certain, or reliable. Being on the leading edge isn’t comfortable–it isn’t meant to be. Because the leading edge is pressing into new terrain. And that’s just what’s happening now.

Everything changed for me when I started to really get the potency and potential of this moment in time. I’ve been hearing about the Shift of the Ages my whole life. Well, at least since the Fifth Dimension recorded and performed “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” in 1969. Even so it was less than two years ago that I began to get it. And part of that has meant being pushed to heal my money issues. It became no longer acceptable or tolerable not to fully live the principles that I professed to believe in. To live inside the old stories, instead of stepping into the new world age. It became intolerable.

Do you believe in the law of attraction, believe in an abundant universe and the benevolence of god/goddess or spirit, yet live in scarcity and struggle? Don’t be embarrassed. You are in very good company. But is that dissonance becoming intolerable to you, too? That’s what’s making things so HOT. The ideas, concepts, understandings even of the infinite, expanding nature of the universe–and the apparent lack all around you. Arrrrg.

Take a breath. And another. Because the more intense it gets, the closer you are to the shift. And you get to decide if you have to run out of your employment, or your unemployment, your business income, your savings, your alimony, or your inheritance, before you make the shift or not. I see so many people go right to the edge before they make a decision to let in what has always been available.

And sometimes, most times, you will need help to make that decision and stick to it. Or even see that the decision is available. I know I did. I needed the help of someone who had already made that decision and was living on the other side of it to help me see it and move through.

How far will you need to be pushed until you start to live the life you came here to lead? Until you agree to step into your true radiance and be fully, unabashedly, notoriously, yourself? Until you stop caring what other people think, and open to your own creativity, skills developed through lifetimes, genius, and inner guidance? Until you focus, simply, clarify, innovate, and bring forth your unique contribution to the new world now emerging? Until you turn away from what has been, and turn toward what is forming within and before you?

Because you are needed. You matter. And when you truly honor yourself–let go the doubts, the habits, the old stories–when you own yourself, when you become sovereign of your being–everything changes. When you grasp your part in this tremendous shift we are all in, everything changes. You become in command of the change, instead of at the mercy of it.

Last week I was in steaming South Carolina with an inspiring group of entrepreneurs who are super smart, savvy, soulful, and fun to be with.

We worked hard, and we played in the pool, taught what’s been working and gave excellent feedback and ideas. I’ve known some of these folks for more than two years, and I love having our relationships deepen over time.

I am also delighted to share with you the winners of the Done4You Giveaway!

I had more than 2000 opt-in to receive my step-by-step template about positioning yourself as an expert in your OWN field. And I also selected three people to receive a 30-minute done for you session with me to take what you’ve done with the template to a whole new level.

Here they are:

Diane Shelton Anne Pillsbury Janet Thomas

You’ll be hearing from us soon with more details on how to claim your prize!

Inside of you there is a burning desire. Can you feel it? Are you connected to the fire that is yours ~ that has your face on it, if you will?

At the core of your Being your radiance comes through the portal of your heart, from the Soul Level into ordinary reality. Your own unique contribution unfolds in front of you as you step down life’s path ~ as you step more and more into your Soul Signature.

When you connect with that burning desire and bring it through into the world through the vehicle of a business, you no longer are “working” because you are doing what you love to do. You are in alignment. You have energy. You are excited. You know you are on the path, even when you don’t know exactly what to do.

Are you distracted, overworking, procrastinating, burned out, stuck or confused? These are signs that you are not on purpose, you are not living from that burning desire. Instead you are living from your will center, and probably from your belief system that says you have to work hard in order to be successful (or stay alive). The thing is, if this belief system takes over, it can even make doing what you love not fun–because you are also pushing too hard, not noticing the inner messages that it’s time to take a break, or do something different.

Let me say one thing about purpose. Purpose is not a thing that you find–a treasure buried in a chest somewhere that you have to find, dig up, and carry around with you.

Purpose is more of a verb than a noun: it emerges, unfolds, and evolves as you move along the path of your life. Your evolving purpose provides a map to your inner landscape. Being “on purpose” means you are engaged in the process of life ~ and you are pursing that which makes you feel alive, your burning desire.

Just like your Soul Signature, you step into your purpose over and over again.

If you pursue a career or business because you believe you can make money doing it, but you are not connected with your passion, two things will happen. One is that you will not be drawing on the power of your Soul, but will be relying on your mental capacity. And as formidable as that is, it is miniscule in comparison with the vision, wisdom, energy, and power of your Soul, the larger, eternal part of you. The other is that in relying on your mental capacity, you will get burned out and become prey to fear because you are operating at far less than your actual potential. And as a result, you will not be as successful–financially otherwise–as you could be.

Open to the wisdom and guidance that is inside of you. Because you already know. Inside you already have that burning desire. And when you allow it to come fully into your life and your business you open to the miraculous.